ERRAND TO LIVE ON

This article is originally published in Insurance Journal 3rd Quarter 2022

A scholar once said, “Comparison defies your personality to become someone else instead of improvisation of the existing”.

Why Saturn is not like Earth, & Jupiter is fifth and Earth is third? Because nature tells you that everyone has their place and they look balanced and perfect where they are. One can’t be someone else. A human can get infatuated, influenced, inspired, or impacted but never become someone. It’s so unnatural that one leaves their path of struggle and effort and starts trying to live the life of others. There are standards, one can pick and choose and fit those traits and lifestyles in existing ones.

Hence proving you can join someone’s journey but you can live there. Just like when you go to college/school/office in the morning you have your path to follow and reach the destination. The least you can do is to lift or join someone’s vehicle so that you both get to the same place but sharing & joining are never equal to living your partner’s life.

An art piece by Mehwish Javaid (Instagram @mjtartgallery)

Empathy: A feeling where one feels the other’s pain and can feel what they have been through is called empathy and it’s just a feeling to make you perform those acts in a proper way that an affected person can’t do because of their pain and grief. A woman in grief because her husband dies of target killing, the whole community comes out to console her pain but they can live the life of that woman. But when a junior employee with poor background & qualification gets a promotion and increments in the company, the envious environment begins and everyone wants to be in his place, here the leg-pulling and competition begin. People start comparing each other based on defined indicators and no one sees the happiness of the promoted guy just like people felt the pain of that woman who lost her husband. Maybe the upgraded guy lived at a different level to achieve this status.

Generous: In the society where we are living right now, only 46% of the working-age population is employed (Government of Pakistan: Finance Division 2021-22). And there is no survey or assessment that shows how content or ungrateful 46% is with their jobs, lives, and people around them. Everyone is running to gain more and more in their lives but do we even know that by giving we get more and in multiplied terms? It’s not karma every time that returns to us against our done things. The good work whether in terms of deeds, in kind, or money is reversed back likewise in any of these forms. But the condition here is that one has to be honest and care about the needy with good and focused intentions. Just think that nothing is what you are getting back and now help people around you.

Patience: a vitamin for life, if we lack it nothing is going to be organized and sequenced in our lives. Anxiety & Depression is emerging as common life pattern just because we all lack patience while making decisions, completing life tasks, and handling relationships. A study in Pakistan says that the overall prevalence of depressive disorders and anxiety is 34% (International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience. The suicide rate in Pakistan has crossed eight percent while one out of 200 suicide dies, (World Health Organization 2022). 58% of Pakistanis believe that the divorce rate has also increased in Pakistan. (Gallup & Gilani Pakistan 2019).

Optimism: What you seek is seeking you, says Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī a Sufi poet and scholar. Thinking negatively and badly all the time leads to bad happenings. Keeping yourself in a positive environment and staying in distance from toxic people and behavior can bring peace and optimistic thoughts all the time. This helps to refine and balance the life cycle and counts in as self-improvisation. There is no better conclusion than Hadith Qudsi mentioned as follows:
Allah the Almighty said: I am as My servant thinks I am. I’m with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm’s length, I draw near to him a cubit, and if he draws near to Me a cubit, I draw near to him a fathom. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed”.